AI Uses Deep Learning to Beat Humans at DOOM

An artificial intelligence agent has proven to be the ultimate survivor in the classic video game Doom—outplaying both the game’s built-in AI agents and human players. Created by two computer science students at Carnegie Mellon University, Devendra Chaplot and Guillaume Lample, the AI used deep-learning techniques to negotiate the game’s 3-D environment. This is still challenging after more than two decades because players must act based only on the portion of the game visible on the screen. This work follows the in the footsteps of Google’s DeepMind, which used deep-learning methods to master two-dimensional Atari 2600 videogames, and earlier this year defeated a world-class professional player in the board game Go. In contrast to the limited information provided in Doom, both Atari and Go give players a view of…